66 Writings of Edward L. Greene. [ZOE 
** very small at the base of a copious hard-cartilaginous or almost 
corneous albumen; cotyledons rounded somewhat convolutely 
enfolding the short blunt radicle” the fact being that the 
cotyledons were as long as the seed, and did not enfold anything. 
_ Although he had the courage to found a genus upon this plant, 
he had no conception of its relationship, and sometime subse- 
quently put this near relation of Guaiacum next to Sim- 
mondsia, in his list of the plants of Cedros Island. 
In declaring Syrmatium* Mr. Greene says: ‘‘In restoring 
this long-negiected genus, I am not obliged to rest it upon those 
characters alone, sufficient although they would seem to be, 
which were indicated both by Vogel and by Nuttall a half century 
ago. The indehiscent pods promptly deciduous at maturity are 
so utterly and widely unlike those of any Hosackia that I 
suppose the character being here pointed out, there will hence- 
forth remain less excuse than formerly for confounding the 
genera.” Subsequently in working over the genus} he found 
himself able not only to reduce Syrmatium to Hosackia again, 
but Hosackia itself to Lotus, remarking that ‘“‘ since the jointed 
pedicels and deciduous fruiting calyces of, for example, the 
Lagopus subgenus of Trifolium are not to be of generic import, 
neither may they be so treated in this group of Lotus which has 
been called a genus under the name of Syrmatium. The 
indehiscence of the pods is not at all confined to this group of 
species. In.the very type of the Hosackias and in all its near 
allies the dehiscence is so tardy that they may about as well be 
described as indehiscent.’’ 
In Pittonia ii, 292, he devotes some space to the fruit of 
Garrya, which according to his account he has just seen mature 
for the first time. He is astonished that great botanists like 
Lindley, Endlicher, and Bentham should have been so greatly 
mistaken as to consider the fruit a berry ‘‘ when the first glance 
_ at these clusters revealed the fact that the fruit is not baccate, 
* Gg tng - eos es has a circumscissile dehiscence. 
on of the capsule is neither very 
Prompt, nor in a geometrically perfect circle, but if tardy and 
* Bull. Cal. Acad. ii, 145. 
} Pitt. -ii, 137. 
